Writing Alums Anika Jade Levy '23 and Stephanie Wambagu '24 Make National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 List

The National Book Foundation recently announced its list of the 5 Under 35 honorees for 2026. Among this year’s awardees are two School of the Arts MFA Writing alums, Anika Jade Levy '23, author of Flat Earth, and Stephanie Wambagu '24, author of Lonely Crowds. 

This year’s honorees were selected from a panel of highly decorated writers affiliated with the National Book Foundation. Wambagu was selected by 2024 National Book Award Finalist Kaveah Akbar. Lonely Crowds, her debut novel, follows only-child of recent immigrants to New England, Ruth, and Maria, whose Panamanian mother dies by suicide, as they navigate their community as outsiders. The novel tracks their friendship in girlhood and follows them through college where they emerge into New York’s 1990s art scene. The novel has been longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and was a finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. 

Levy’s Flat Earth follows Avery, a graduate student in New York City grappling with the financial strains of modern life. When her best friend, Frances, drops out of grad school, gets married, and creates a feature documentary to much acclaim among New York’s artistic milieu, Avery struggles to find her footing, turning to work for a right-wing dating app that simultaneously drains her and imbues her with sharp observations about her world.

Flat Earth is Levy’s debut novel. She has had other work featured in outlets such as Vogue, Interview, and Nylon. She is also co-founder of Forever Magazine where she continues to serve as editor.

When it came time to write her first novel, the support and guidance from Columbia faculty including Sam Lipsyte, Leslie Jameson, and Ben Marcus, were instrumental in shaping Levy's taste “I don’t think anyone knows how to write a book until they do it. And as you’re doing it, you’re really just groping around in the dark. I’ve always, as a student, been sort of sycophantic, and having a workshop professor with a strong sense of taste who I really admire and can write towards is one of the only things that’s really worked for me.”

Writing alum Sigrid Nunez '75 selected Levy for this year’s 5 Under 35 list. “I cannot imagine a more special author to be recognized by,” Levy said. “A couple days prior, my mother had sent me this article in The New York Times about authors being preyed on by scammers pretending to be prestigious literary organizations pretending to be handing out awards. So when I got the call I thought it was a phishing scam. I was so shocked and so moved and I think it was cathartic for me, not just because of this book, but also because we’ve been doing Forever Magazine for five years. I think in many ways that project has been dismissed because that project has been pretty elaborate and historically pretty girly. I felt like we never got a shred of institutional credibility. In a way, it felt like a real vindication of all the work I’ve been doing in New York. I was so happy to be able to tell my parents and my grandparents. It was really quite a shock." 

Levy and Wambagu will be honored at this year’s prize ceremony on June 9, 2026 at Littlefield in Brooklyn.